North Lanarkshire Update

In a recent post to the blog site I criticised the local performance pay scheme which handed big 'performance' bonuses to chief officials in North Lanarkshire Council - to the tune of £2 million during the period 2002 to 2014.

Now for much of this time low paid workers in North Lanarkshire were fighting their Labour-run Council for equal pay and, lo and behold, the Council's pay arrangements were shown to be discriminatory - pay arrangements which were put in place by the chief executive and senior officials advising the corporate management team.

But in a response to a recent FoI Review Request the Council seemed to lose its temper with me and made a silly threat to 'bear in mind' comments made on the blog site when responding to any future requests for information.

So I have written to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) as I believe any future FoI requests must be treated on their merits, as the legislation clearly requires.

North Lanarkshire's chief officials may bridle at comments I believe to be entirely fair, but as I said in a separate email to the Council's Principal Solicitor, Gerard Gardiner, the big performance bonuses have now been stopped and I like to think that I played a part in their downfall.   

Dear SIC (Scottish Information Commissioner)

North Lanarkshire Council

Please find enclosed an exchange of correspondence with North Lanarkshire Council regarding a FOI Review Request which I submitted to the Council on 6 July 2015. 

I also enclose, by way of background a previous FOI and FOI review request submitted to North Lanarkshire Council on the same subject.

I do not wish to waste anyone's time by formally appealing to SIC about the nature of North Lanarkshire's response, not least because I have already obtained the information I asked for originally through an alternative source (a sympathetic council official).

The point that I would like to raise with SIC is the following paragraph of the letter from the Council's Principal Solicitor, Gerard Gardiner, who says in his response:

"I fail to see how the foregoing is demonstrative of the Council “[trying] to keep this information under wraps”.  The entirely unfair imputation of character of Council Officers which can be inferred from your blog post will be borne in mind in respect of future requests for information."  

Now my criticisms of the North Lanarkshire Council's performance bonus scheme for its highest paid chief officials are clearly irrelevant when it comes to dealing with my FOI requests, as are my reasons for requesting such information in the first place, unless these requests can be shown to be vexatious, of course.

So I would like to place on record with SIC my concern at North Lanarkshire Council issuing such a silly and ill-advised threat as I expect any future FOI requests to be treated strictly on their merit, as the FOISA legislation requires.

Kind regards

Mark Irvine